Psychiatrists' responses to violence: pharmacologic management of psychiatric inpatients.

Court decisions setting limits on the use of medication in psychiatric hospitals often assume that psychiatrists use medications inappropriately in response to patients' violent acts. No empirical data have existed to support or refute this assumption. The authors examined the types and doses of antipsychotic medications received by 45 violent patients and 48 control subjects. They found no significant differences in type and dose of medication before the violent act and no significant changes afterward. Violent patients tended to be on somewhat higher doses at discharge than control patients. The judicial concern that psychotropic medications will automatically be abused or overused is not supported by these results.